A horse is all we ever wanted.
While classmates pleaded for a new ball glove or a BB gun, that was not so with us. We wanted a horse from the first time we can remember. We’d ride every broom as if it were a horse, set across the end of the divan imagining it was our horse, and bounce the springs on the rocking horse such that Grandma warned us they were going to break.
We were so thrilled when we could ride our cousin’s horse, Sandy, and we’ll never forget the time Johnny took us to ride his brother’s horse, Pal. Finally, when we were in the fifth grade, our parents couldn’t take any more begging. Dad bought us a spotted mare, and we named her Spot. That was the best day, up to that point, in our life.
Spot was ridden every day for at least a year without missing. The horse show was scheduled, and we practiced Spot hard around the bushel baskets out in the field, getting ready for the barrel race. Come show day, we excitedly paid the 50-cent entry fee. There were four riders, and we got last, but our first ribbon, which we still have and cherish.
That was 45 years ago, and we now have great-great-granddaughters of Spot raising foals. Spot was mated, at a fee of $35, to Peppy Creek, a gorgeous buckskin stallion. She produced a bay filly, Missy Creek; a striking spotted filly, Buchman’s Queen; and a buckskin colt, Buster. Queen was responsible for generating the spotted horses we
have.
A car wreck in February, 1973, knocked us unconscious for two days. We can’t remember a thing about the accident. However, our best friend visited us in the hospital and offered to sell us his black stallion, a son of Peppy Creek. The stud was uniquely named after our comrade himself: Dennis Good. God works in the most mysterious ways.
Less than a dozen Quarter Horse mares have been purchased through the years to raise foals. We’ve grown through saving daughters. Today, nearly all of our 100 horses trace to Peppy Creek, through his daughter, Buchman’s Queen, or his son, Dennis Good. We’ve had 22 horse sales on the second Saturdays of October. We sold six foals in 1985.
Numbers have expanded each year. We’ll have our 23rd sale this Saturday, Oct. 13. It will be a big day, and a very sad time for us, as we will be selling, not only the spring foal crop, but also 20 head of mature horses from the heart of our herd. We’ve made the difficult decision to reduce our horse numbers. It’s almost like selling our own
family.
As we’ve quoted before from Ecclesiastes 3:1-2: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to build and a time to tear down.” We are not uprooting, nor tearing down, really, just reducing. It is the season and the time.
Horses provide us strength for all we do. Such is described in Job 39:20-22: “The glory of a horse’s nostrils is terrible. He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength: the horse goes to meet armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted.”
+++ALLELUIA+++